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- The oldest European marmots: Metrical study of the Marmota fossils from the Early and Middle Pleistocene of Sierra de Atapuerca sites (Burgos, Spain)Publication . Estraviz López, Darío; Cuenca-Bescos, Gloria; Blain, Hugues-Alexandre; López-García, Juan Manuel; Núñez-Lahuerta, Carmen; Galán, JuliaABSTRACT: The oldest European remains of marmots (Genus Marmota) are 0.8 my old and come from the site of Gran Dolina, Atapuerca. Dental measurements from the specimens recovered at Gran Dolina are compared with other Early Pleistocene fossil marmots from Croatia; as well as a set of Middle and Late Pleistocene marmots from France and Italy and Middle Pleistocene fossils from other sites at Sierra de Atapuerca. These fossils are also compared with four species of modern marmots, including? an extensive sample of Marmota marmota. Plotting the length of each dental piece of Gran Dolina versus its width, less than 25% of the Early Pleistocene specimens fall into the variability of Marmota marmota, meanwhile the Middle Pleistocene fossils fall within (or extremely close) to its variability. These Early Pleistocene marmots cannot be metrically assigned to the extant alpine marmot.
- Type specimens alone have a strong correlation with taxa record by geological epoch: the case study of the fossil vertebrates named from Portuguese typesPublication . Mateus, Octávio; Estraviz López, Darío; Madeira Mateus, Simão GustavoABSTRACT: Type specimens (holotypes, neotypes, syntypes, etc.) are of crucial importance because they are the only tangible evidence of the nomenclatural act that supports the understanding of paleobiodiversity. The list of the vertebrate species whose type specimen is based on fossils from Portugal is presented here. We counted 206 species, of which there are 45 bony fishes, 39 Late Jurassic Mammaliamorpha, 33 Cenozoic mammals, 28 non-avian dinosaurs, 25 non-dinosaur reptiles, 11 Cenozoic Aves, 22 Chondrichthyes and three other vertebrates. Except for the Quaternary fossil record, the type specimens can be used as a shortcut for measuring the fossil record and paleobiodiversity through geological time and rock units because they correlate in 95% with the fossil record by epoch in the case-study of fossil vertebrates of Portugal.